Joel Thornton
Since post-punk outfit Savages called it quits in 2017, former frontwoman Jehnny Beth has been m aking a career out of outpacing expectations, deliberately zigging the presumed zag.
Debut solo effort TO LOVE IS TO LIVE in no way resembles any of her previous work – instead, it favours the stylings of swirling chamber-pop as a backdrop for her grand existential meltdown. Next outing, Utopian Ashes, was a total Mad Lib of a collaboration with Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream. The two singers harked back to duet albums of the 1970s and 80s, in gimmick as a couple breaking up over some funky – if forgettable – country-pop music.
There’s no end to it: I clicked on a YouTube video that promised a roundtable discussion with members of Black Country, New Road, as well as bona fide rock legends Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) and Ed O’Brien (Radiohead). Lo and behold, Jehnny Beth was hosting. I watched Anatomy of a Fall (2023) on the recommendation of the entire world, and there she was again, now playing a detective. Just recently, a friend told me about a new Netflix series with Suranne Jones, so I looked it up… you get the idea.
It appears she’s busier than ever, throwing things at the wall, travelling, being creatively free. So it’s interesting to land back in the old realm, as it were, with a straight-up rock album – You Heartbreaker, You.
Track three, ‘Obsession’, owes a significant debt to early Nine Inch Nails but pays it by canonising them as the last word in alt-rock sexy. The breathy vocals of the track’s first half put you in a bit of a voyeuristic situation. Lines like “You’re born with a soul, made for love”, grumbled in a morning voice as they are, can’t be meant for your ears. Rest assured, the desperate, bellowing refrain that finally breaks the tension will boot you in the fucking head for your sins. The album title drop here (“You, I love you/You, heartbreaker you”) isn’t the only tone setter to speak of, as production will largely trend this way: loud-quiet-loud, the Pixies playbook.
The big 2000s Kerrang!-ready chorus on ‘Out of My Reach’ comes out of nowhere, and feels like nothing else on the record. I spent a while trying to pin down exactly of which band it felt reminiscent, and couldn’t do so despite it making my brain itch. That’s a great sign, and with a few other more obvious places to point on the album, it shows that Beth’s continuing flirtations with these various heavy sub-genres come from a genuine place of admiration and fandom.
‘I Still Believe’ is a comparatively primal evil, yet incredibly polished for anything ordinarily by that description. I thought on a few occasions along the run time about that idea becoming a sticking point for certain listeners – about how the lack of lo-fi anything will deter the in-the-weeds gatekeepers of sonic chaos: the punk faithful, the industrial heads. If anything, I think it’s more impressive to do things this way. The whole LP is a series of controlled demolitions, monuments of the “Savages frontwoman” torn down in broad daylight to make way for a new identity. Do you not think there’s a reason she’s back to making rock music? In saying that, flashes of those old powerful vocal performances come forth on another thumper chorus, one purpose built for that jump-up moment live.
It isn’t just the aforementioned calm/carnage relationship of Beth’s compositions that explore the dynamics of power; along the project she’ll flit between feeling emboldened and completely dwarfed, unstoppable and vulnerable, hurt and defiantly fine. On a song like ‘I See Your Pain’, she can only offer the most miniscule consolation to a hurting world. On a song like ‘I Still Believe’, she could viably tear it down. You Heartbreaker, You tells the overarching story of an artist figuring their shit out in real time: whether that’s her position as an artist, within her relationship or even on a societal level.
Jehnny Beth’s power is that she is diametrically opposed to ‘cringe’ as a concept (see the “I had sex with Jehnny Beth” shirt she sells in her merch store), she legitimately doesn’t care how she’s being perceived, so long as she’s doing her thing. I think that’s a genuinely admirable trait and hugely assists her in delivering on something that often feels like reading a diary, or her notes app – something she might spray paint on a wall. Ideas more considered and expounded upon would actually take away from the feelings she’s been able to bottle so well: raw, ugly, honest.
Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few lyrical moments that feel a touch too juvenile and undercooked, even for the whole ‘wild woman spits out her heart’ thing she’s clearly going for. ‘High Resolution Sadness’ is particularly groan-inducing, because I’ve had eyes and ears over the past decade and have thus seen and heard a lot of well-intentioned works of art get no further in their technophobic critiques than ‘phone = bad’. She doesn’t either, and doesn’t care, but I’d have left that one in the drafts. By and large however, it is a stellar record with significantly more hits than misses. I’d say half of the track list is career-best stuff.
I think the real champion of the album is the mixing. Naturally, it’s a total game of parts… there has to be ebb and flow, misdirects, fake-outs and stalls to build to the firefights she thrives in. I feel a lesser project would absolutely lose some of those important pacing moments in the undercurrent, but here everything pops as it should and so the adrenaline never really wears off. It is a mere half an hour in length and so positively break-neck that it barely even feels like that. There have been a lot of excellent rock records this year (quick shouts to Deftones, TURNSTILE, Viagra Boys) and this instantly walks among them. I hope if Beth is back home, so to speak, that she’s here a little while longer.
